New Work at the Pasta Factory

Barilla wants to be one of the good guys and does a lot to make it so: skips environmentally hazardous palm oil; reformulates recipes to lower the fat, salt and sugar in pasta, sauces and baked goods; uses almost exclusively recyclable packaging; has ambitious goals for reducing carbon emissions, water and energy consumption. Its biggest factory, near Parma, which produces a quarter of its global total, is largely automated. But Barilla wants to take the next step and become more effective, efficient and sustainable.

First, Barilla managers visited Porsche’s automotive plants in Germany, where they saw first-hand how to forge ahead with transformation. Then they got to work with the consultants from Porsche Consulting in their own main plant, the biggest pasta factory in the world, to set up a continuous improvement project. The objective was to train employees in a highly automated factory and get them excited about new technologies and modes of working. It was a question of cultural transformation.

The project with Porsche Consulting at the heart of the company, the state-of-the-art factory on the outskirts of Parma, was a success: Eight additional Barilla locationsfollowed its example, and soon all of its 28 production locations worldwide will benefit from the experience and insights gained here. “The Porsche Consulting approach was a perfect fit for us,” says Antonio Copercini, Chief Group Supply Chain Officer for the Barilla Group, “because it centers around the people.”